One of the first orchids I ever had as a boy was a Dendrobium – it was the typical purple/fuschia version that sprays its blooms in arching form like some glorious surreal fountain. It sent up its segmented stalks accented with thick green leaves and loved the extra water in the air that a humidifier provided, but never received the care required to rebloom. Since then, the Dendrobium was a plant I admired from a distance, and never enough to try at home.
When preparing for a visit from friends last year, I needed a bouquet and found this unlabeled orchid at Fresh Market. Intending only to have it for a few weeks and then bring it outside for a farewell summer, I ended up leaving it on the front windowsill, which gets the most light, and then forgetting about it.
As the universe tends to go in matters of gardening and flower culture, a little sign of hope and fight appeared as a tiny mode swelled and expanded into an offshoot near the end of an otherwise-bare stalk. Taking that as a sign, I nudged the humidity up a bit and began fertilizing the little guy, eventually repotting it from its plastic home into a prettier glazed ceramic orchid pot.
Every two weeks or so I gave it a healthy dose of fertilizer, and for a year it showed bits of new growth. This winter, it began to exhibit a few bumps, and while I first thought they might be more offshoots, I was pleasantly surprised to see them develop into flower buds.
As this mystery variety was unmarked, I looked online and the closest I can guess is that it’s a variety of Dendrobium nobile. The blooms have been going strong as pictured for a few weeks now – far longer than any cut flower bouquet could ever muster. The surprise for me was their fragrance: light and elusive, it’s not always present. More maddening, there doesn’t seem to be a specific time when it’s more pronounced, the way some flowers emit their most powerful fragrance at night or in the morning. I still can’t get a read on when this one is at its most potent, so it remains a lovely guessing game.
The perfume is lovely – slightly similar to the almost-ethereal fragrance of the hosta – the faintest notion of a lily, which is what most of us say about any bloom.
The majority of our houseplants do not flower (save for this wildly unpredictable cactus) so I am treasuring this moment, and this orchid, and doing my best to keep it happy.
